In my lifetime, I never thought that mastery of the English language would require me to update my vocabulary and usage so frequently. I had almost drawn the line at the emoji becoming recognised as an official entry into the Oxford dictionary, but then I have been forced to coin the idiom, as cool as a disease. Cucumber is definitely out of the window, replaced with ADHD, sex roulette, and the latest sophomore at sickness college, selfies.
Now I am not making fun of anyone who suffers from anything. I suffer from quite a few ailments myself, none of which may be as serious as yours; immaterial, for I am not in it for competition, or empathy. But at no point have any of us had the option to feel proud of our illnesses. The boy who couldn’t play in the sun didn’t fashion himself a vampire, the girl who had a fear of heights didn’t flaunt it on vacations, even the chap who was so fragile that his bones broke every time… oh wait, that was a movie.
You get the idea, my stuttering friends did everything to hide it, same with lisps, limps, tics and other anomalous behavioural patterns. Me chewing my fingernails or sucking a thumb were much shunned till I finally gave them up on my big 30th. Okay, am lying, I still chew them cuticles.
Today, I find that having a weird inherent trait, a one-off genome is considered cool. People with attention disorders (or even autism, as one website propounded, although I doubt it was a legit source for anything, save for self-promotion) are advised to carry fidget spinners. But unlike a crutch or a walker, it is cool to have one. I have one and, if anything, it gets me more attention than I could ever have wanted. Is that the new cure for things, to fight poison with poison? Are fidget spinners more like a social vaccine then?
Moving on, we have the Spanish, who, after tiring of their endless joblessness, are playing sex roulette where they think it’s cool to end up with AIDS. Yes, AIDS! Not dandruff or a weird rash in the nether regions, but AIDS. The crippling Iberian economy is now having to add medicines for the HIV positive as a national concern of a dire nature.
Finally, and most recently, selfies have been declared a problem. I have condemned them since forever but always got shushed for not being ‘with it’; clearly, in a world of zombies, to be alive is unnatural. If you have ever taken a picture of yourself and shared it online, then you are clearly a potential threat to society and have latent psychopathic tendencies. If you have edited that picture before posting it, then you are suited to be fitted with a straitjacket and put away somewhere remote to be forgotten. Not me, that’s what the men in white lab coats are saying.
Don’t rebut with how Van Gogh and Dali painted self-portraits — one of them cut off his ear and the other was famously as looney as a tune! In fact, my insta-feed is full of photos of people that they took themselves and are even making money off it somehow. Mr Warhol, only 15 minutes of fame would be a blessing in today’s times when everyone is a friggin’ star of their own full-length biopic.
Meanwhile, back to the notion of affections for afflictions. I am hoping that incontinence becomes cool by the time I turn 80 for that would save me a bundle on diapers but a lot more in social embarrassment.
This column is for anyone who gives an existential toss
